


There's a Ghost in My Home (And It Just Won't Go)

by crankyrage



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Depression, M/M, Self-Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 20:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16961022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankyrage/pseuds/crankyrage
Summary: He feels so out of control all the time. He feels like he’s not living his life – it’s living him. He feels like being out of control is the only way he can take back control.





	There's a Ghost in My Home (And It Just Won't Go)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! In 2013 I wrote a very short piece dealing with depression and a suicide attempt. It was a difficult piece for me to write and even more difficult to post. I received some amazing feedback, and so that's why I'm finally posting this. 
> 
> This is an unfinished long-ish fic that's in the same universe. It tells of the lead-up and some of the aftermath of what caused Patrick to attempt to take his life in In the Darkness (I will Meet my Creators). I've never posted anything unfinished before. I'm truly a perfectionist in every way, shape, and form. But I finally decided to share what I've managed to write over the years in this 'verse. Some of it was written in 2013 and some of it was written much more recently. It's far from perfect, but I hope everyone who felt connected to the original finds something in these ramblings, and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> I may continue to write and finish this (only it's been like 5 years so who knows). If you have comments/concerns/feedback please let me know. 
> 
> This work is obviously in compilation with In the Darkness (I Will Meet My Creators) but can be read as a stand-alone.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Title taken from Grace Carter's Waiting Room
> 
> Warning: this piece has themes of depression, self-mutilation, suicidal language, and a suicide attempt 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing and mean no harm by using any real-life person or their likeness; this is simply a work of fiction for entertainment value.

It happens for the first time when he’s in Detroit. At first he thinks it’s homesickness creeping back up after being away from home for almost a year. He thinks he’s hit some kind of threshold or something where the ache of missing his family is becoming something that starts affecting his everyday life. 

He’s tired all the time to the point that he’s almost falling asleep in class everyday and listing during team meetings.

But, the thing is, he can’t sleep. He’s so, so tired, and all he wants to do his sleep every minute of everyday, but when he gets in bed all he can do is stare at the ceiling for hours upon hours.

He feels like the walls are starting to close in on him, but he can’t understand why – why now. He thought he was finally coming to terms with the separation. It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe he’s not as strong as he always hoped he’d be. 

He tries to ignore it, hoping that the tightness in his chest eventually goes away. But, it doesn’t. He feels nauseous all the time like he shouldn’t be able to eat solid food. He’s angry, and he doesn’t know why.

He starts walling off those irrational feelings from everything else. There’s all those things he feels and can’t make sense of – the things he feels when he’s alone, and there’s the person everyone else gets to see. 

He’s loud and he’s boisterous. He’s funny and bright. He’s lewd and outgoing and kind of an ass. 

He’s magnetic. 

But inside, he’s so angry and tired and apathetic. 

He feels like he wants to cry all the time, but no tears ever come out.

He’s starting to become afraid of himself – of the person he’s starting to be. 

They’re at a tournament in Eastern Canada. He doesn’t really know where – he doesn’t really care.

He’s had a pretty terrible game and an even worse tournament. He’s starting to feel like he’s losing his grip on hockey, and he can’t because it’s all he has – it’s everything. 

He throws his pads into his bag and mutters a string of curses; all the other guys give him a berth knowing when someone’s that frustrated that it’s better just to let them hash it out on his own. 

Pretty soon the locker room’s emptying out, and he finds himself yelling and he can’t stop – he’s yelling for himself to wake the fuck up – to be better – to make all the things that he’s sacrificed worth it – to be a man.

Coach finds him hunched in the corner of the empty locker room a while later sobbing uncontrollably. He doesn’t know when he started crying. He’s not sad – he doesn’t know what he’s feeling anymore. 

Coach tries to calm him down, telling him to let it go – that he’s not a little girl.

And he’s trying, but he can’t stop crying, and he doesn’t know why and his skin feels too tight and everything hurts, but it doesn’t and he can’t explain it even to himself.

Eventually, he stops crying and he gets on the bus and he tries not to think about the incident. He tries to shoulder everything he’s feeling and just muddle through, but he doesn’t know how.

He lies in bed for hours and hours and he can’t sleep – he can’t turn his brain off, as much as he wants to. 

He looks at himself in the mirror, and he comes to the realization that he doesn’t know the person staring back at him anymore. Somehow he’s lost himself in this haze – this apathy – and he doesn’t know how to find himself again. The days have turned into months, and he doesn’t know who he is anymore.

One of his teammates asks off handedly one day, after he’s had a particularly poor practice and can’t bring himself to put on a complete façade, what’s wrong.

He freezes for a moment and shrugs flashing him the best smile he can muster and responds, “Nothing.”

The thing is, it’s not even a lie. Nothing is wrong. Everything is.

The feelings don’t go away. But, he gets a lot better at separating them from the person he needs to be – the hockey player, the brother, the son, and even the persona he’s created – the fun person everyone expects him to be.

They begin to cycle in and out; he feels fine for months and months but then suddenly, he wakes up one morning and feels like he can’t get out of bed. All he wants to do is cry, and it’s the one thing he can’t do.

It becomes part of his life as he grows up, the ups and downs and feelings of total hopelessness. Deep down inside he knows what he’s feeling isn’t normal. But, he also doesn’t know how to verbalize it. He doesn’t know what to say to make people understand. 

His parents have already given so much so he could chase his dream that there’s no way that he can give them something else to worry about. And, he definitely can’t unload all of his fears and insecurities and pain on his sisters.

Frankly, he’s a little embarrassed. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him other than he must be a little crazy. Nothing wrong is happening in his life. Everything, despite a few setbacks, is going according to plan. He doesn’t know where all of it is coming from. He can’t rationalize what he’s feeling.

His life isn’t supposed to be this way. He’s closer everyday to reaching his dream, and yet, he feels like his life isn’t going anywhere. He feels like his life is a death sentence.

But, he doesn’t know how to admit that aloud, and even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t. He needs to learn to buck up, be a man, and shoulder some of that pain. So he begins to build his wall higher and higher and create an even more elaborate façade than before.

By the time he’s on his way to Chicago, he has it down to a science. The more animated and obnoxious he acts, the less people will wonder – the less people will know. 

He’s so good a letting people think they know him when they know nothing about him. Sure, they know his favorite color and his favorite basketball team; they’ve heard every childhood story. They think he’s an over-sharer. When in reality, they don’t know anything.

He’s had close friends and teammates over the years. In London, Sam and him are so tight on and off the ice, people joke that they never see one without the other. And it is true; they’re best friends. 

It’s not that he doesn’t want to tell Sam. He just doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know if he can. He doesn’t understand where to even begin. It’s not even a thing – it’s his life. It’s hard to put your own pain into words. It’s hard to verbalize the feeling of helplessness – hopelessness – the feeling he gets when he physically can’t get out of bed in the morning. 

It’s strange because he thinks that sometimes he really wants to let people in – he wants to tell someone his secrets and pain. He wants so badly for someone to understand. But, he continues to keep his most personal things locked inside his chest and close to his heart. He wants someone to understand, but he doesn’t want him to have to know – he doesn’t want to say everything out loud – it makes it too real. 

He wants to share his life with other people, and maybe that’s why he’s so open about everything else; he doesn’t want to live with crippling loneliness. Yet, when it comes time to really share with someone else – to put everything out there, he doesn’t actually do it. 

Deep down, he’s afraid that even if he lets everything out – puts all his cards on the table, the things that keep him up at night, the tightness in his chest, and the feelings of despair and disappointment simply won’t go away. He’s afraid that if he finally lets someone know his pain, it won’t matter. It won’t make him any less lonely and afraid – it won’t make anything any less real.

He’s learned to live with the cycles while hiding it from everyone. It’s become one of the biggest parts of his life.

He can share all he wants, but at the end of the day, even if someone knows – they don’t really know. They’re not in his head – in his soul. They don’t feel what he does every single minute of every day.

By the time he gets to rookie camp in Chicago, hiding becomes second nature to the point where he doesn’t even fully know where the façade starts and ends. He’s becoming his persona – a construct of the person he used to be.

He doesn’t really know how he and Jonny become a thing. He guesses he does, but not really. It started with teenage hormones and just kind of snowballed from there.

The thing is his life was always about hockey and his family and hockey and trying to grow up and hockey and trying not to ostracize himself from his peers and hockey and trying to scrape by in school and hockey and trying to survive on his own and hockey and hockey and some more hockey. So, between all that and trying to survive being a teenager, he doesn’t really have the time to think about girls. Sure, they’re always around especially when he’s in London lighting it up for the Knights. But, they just don’t really blip on his radar as a priority. 

He thinks girls are pretty, objectively, and he’s attracted to them, and it’s not like he’s some kind of virgin or something, but he just – he doesn’t see the whole thing about investing himself into another person. He doesn’t understand how you can like let another person in like that. 

He sees a lot of his friends and teammates really get fucked up about girls and sees how it makes people act, and he just doesn’t have time for it. He’s trying to make the NHL not some high school squad.

Sam tells him once when they’re drinking alone in a hotel room in Bumfuck, Canada after a pretty spectacular loss on a pretty grueling roadtrip that he just doesn’t get him. 

Pat asks him why, and he just sighs puffing out his breath like he does sometimes and says, “I dunno, man. You’re really cool, y’know, and we’re buds. But, like I feel like underneath all those smiles and shit there’s just something off about you – you’re like I dunno man, I just don’t know. You’re like intense but you’re not.”

Patrick takes the bottle of Captain away from Sam and tucks him into bed as he continues to babble and tries not to think about his drunken rant. The thing is he doesn’t get himself either.

So, the thing with Jonny is kind of surprising.

He remembers the nights when they’re rookies camped out on Seabs’ couch while everyone else is out cause they’re still both underage in the States and Brisson would kill them if they get caught underage in a bar.

The thing about Jonny is he’s a real romantic – always in Patrick’s space trying to show him affection. Patrick’s never really understood the need. But, it’s nights like these where he understands where Jonny’s coming from. 

They’re watching the Deadliest Catch in the dark huddled as closely as possible on the couch. Jonny has his arm draped over Patrick’s shoulders tightly, and Patrick has his head laying against his chest listening to the rumble of his voice as he talks lazily about whatever comes to mind. Jonny’s got his fingers tangled in his hair, and Pat doesn’t hate it.

He thinks that he could maybe love Jonny, but he just doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know if he can – if he’s capable. 

He realizes eventually that Jonny loves him, even with all the screaming matches on and off the ice. Between all the pigtail pulling and hard hits on the ice, he knows. They’re just kids and it’s so, so stupid. But, there it is.

And it just kind of snowballs from there, you see. Suddenly, he wakes up one morning and he’s 23, and he’s been in a serious relationship for like five years, and he’s not sure really how he’s gotten here. He’s not sure if he’s scared of it – but he’s just – he doesn’t understand. 

The first time he thinks about killing himself is three-fourths of his way through his rookie year. He’s lying in bed wide-awake at 5 am at Seabs’ with Jonny wrapped around him. (Duncs had told them months before that Seabs knew he was sneaking in into Jonny’s room from the couch when he stayed over, so he should just give up trying to hide it.) 

He’s lying there with his octopus boyfriend wrapped around him after getting to play a great game of hockey for an original six team, which drafted him first overall, and he’s one of the top frontrunners for the Calder Trophy. He’s got super supportive parents, three great little sisters, grandparents who love him unconditionally, and a city that really, really believes he can revive a once renowned sports’ team. 

But, he’s not happy.

He’s not anything.

He lies there and thinks about how much better things would be if he just ceased existing. All the thoughts that keep him up at night – that haunt his dreams – would be gone. He wouldn’t have to hide all this pain. He wouldn’t have to pretend everything was okay.

The thoughts surprise him a little; he doesn’t even know he’s suicidal.

He always assumed that suicide is acted upon by impulse. Everything becomes too much all at once, and someone takes it too far. That it’s a “permanent solution to a temporary problem.” When in reality, that’s not how it happens at all. Once you get the idea to end it all in your head, you think about it – all the time, every single day. You think about the relief of not existing anymore. You think about how much it would just make the pain go away – this pain you don’t even understand.

People don’t kill themselves on impulse. They do it because nothing else seems viable, and the world seems like a black hole with no escape.

In that moment, he feels like he’ll never feel happiness again – that his life will forever be shades of gray. He feels like he’s flat-lining.

He continues to live through the cycles as he works himself into becoming a key part of the Blackhawks’ organization. But the thing about the wall that he’s been building since he was 14 is that everything on the other side’s just been growing and growing – and pushing until the whole thing’s about to come down.

During the middle of the cup run in 2010 before the chaos of the Olympics and everything, they have a rare day completely to themselves. Jonny tries to get him to get up and go on a run with him early in the morning, but Pat’s just not about that life. So, Jonny leaves him for a good part of the morning into the early afternoon, while he works out and does his errands.

“Kaner, c’mon, you’re going to sleep away the whole day,” Jonny says as he starts opening the room darkening blinds.

Patrick doesn’t respond. He’s so tired.

Jonny stalks over to him and pulls the covers off of him but stops abruptly, and Pat doesn’t understand why.

There’s an awkward silence for a moment before he asks slowly, “What’s wrong?”

“’M tired, asshole,” he responds a little surprised at how raw his voice sounds.

Jonny scoots himself next to Pat on the bed and cups his face with one of his hands, “Pat – Patrick – you’re crying.”

Pat cracks one of his eyes and squints at Jonny; he looks entirely freaked out in a way that promises he’s as far from joking as he can be, which is saying something.

Patrick opens his mouth to say something, and he accidently lets out a sob – and it’s definitely the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to him. He’s making this noise like he’s almost dying – and feels like it’s not even him. He’s sobbing and sobbing and sobbing – and he has no idea why – this isn’t his life. It’s an entirely out of body experience because he hears himself crying, and he feels Jonny try to wipe the tears away and calm him down – but he’s not feeling anything else.

He feels numb to it – and then he just feels this white hot fear that rushes through his body – because he can’t even control anything anymore. He’s waking up sobbing for no reason – this is what he’s become. He’s terrified in that moment and he keeps crying harder and harder trying to pull away from Jonny because there is something seriously wrong with him, and Jonny doesn’t need to see it – shouldn’t have to. 

He’s always wanted Jonny to be enough – to stop his thoughts from racing – the searing pain in the back of his head. But love – and it sounds cliché – sometimes isn’t enough.

Jonny’s not God, and he’s not Patrick’s savior. He can’t control what goes on in Patrick’s head. He loves him sure, but he can’t – he can’t make everything stop the way Patrick wishes he could. 

Patrick has these realizations that he can love Jonny and still not be whole himself. He can still hate himself and feel like he wants to die all the time even though he has a boyfriend who loves him – who is supposed to complete him or something, but that’s not the way that life works. Life isn’t some type of romantic comedy.

Somehow he’s started to believe this fallacy that if he only found the right person who he could love and cherish and make him feel the way Jonny does every single day, than everything else in his life would just start fixing itself. That love could be so encompassing that it trumps every other emotion. But, it unfortunately isn’t that powerful. 

And, Jonny, even though he loves Patrick – and through everything Patrick knows that shit’s unconditional, he isn’t that powerful. He’s just a person with his own wants and needs and scars and fears. He can’t take Patrick’s pain away, and he shouldn’t have to. He shouldn’t be expected to.

The rhetoric that life is created for two is insane – that true happiness can only come from finding that person who makes you whole. Happiness isn’t something that you can achieve. It’s not the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box – it’s not even the goddamn Stanley Cup. We all want love – but we don’t even know why sometimes. 

Because we can love, and we can still hurt. 

We can love, and we can still hate.

We can love and still want to die. 

He has what people search for their entire lives. He has money, fame, and success. Most importantly, he’s found the person who he knows he’s going to spend the rest of his life with – however long that may be. He’s found someone who loves him despite everything that he says and does. 

But, it doesn’t make the pain go away – the numbness that fills entire body up.

It doesn’t stop him from lying awake at night thinking about the easiest way to make everything go away.

He can love Jonny with everything he has, and it can still not be enough.

Jonny pulls him close making comforting noises in his ear, and Patrick tries to pull away and he can’t and shoves at him – and he’s angry – and he doesn’t know why. None of this is Jonny’s fault. 

He’s crying, and he can’t stop, and he remembers that day when he was 14, feeling helpless, trying to buck up and be a man and realizes that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to. 

“Stop, Patrick – Stop!” Jonny raises his voice grabbing onto Patrick’s wrist. “Tell me what’s wrong, babe.”

Patrick doesn’t even know where to begin. So, he just tries to get out of Jonny’s hold; he just wants him to leave him alone. He fights and fights, but Jonny’s stronger and more stable and keeps his arm tight around him trying to get him to calm down.

So, he eventually stops trying to fight him. He just continues to sob into his chest, and Jonny just rubs his back and doesn’t try to talk anymore. He kisses Patrick’s hair and pulls him close whispering, “I’ve got you.”

The sad thing is, Patrick knows Jonny doesn’t mean to lie. 

They don’t talk about it for a few days until they’re on the road again, and Jonny gets a little more than buzzed and finally has the balls to ask.

Patrick doesn’t know what to say because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what happened. 

He shrugs Jonny off and says, “I just must have had a gnarly dream, man. I can’t remember it now though. I guess that shit can probably happen. I should Google it.”

Even inebriated Jonny has one hell of an unimpressed face, “Yeah?”

“I dunno – I must have been upset in the dream and then you woke me up, and I was scared, and I didn’t know where I was.”

Jonny stays silent and messily unzips his jeans and clamors into bed. Patrick brushes his teeth and comes back to him looking far more sober than he had minutes before.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” he asks only slurring slightly.

“’Course.” Patrick replies laughing it off. 

They go to sleep, and the guilt just keeps building up to the point that Patrick feels dizzy.

He doesn’t really know if the drinking and partying starts as self-medication. He doesn’t think so because at the time, he’s just a kid; it’s something everyone does. Everyone goes out and gets blitzed once in a while. It’s all a part of growing up.

He’s not that different to begin with. He tags along with his teammates to parties and drinks a little more than he should. It’s not something that he ever carries over to the ice; everyone has a little too much fun sometimes. 

He doesn’t know when it begins to become a thing. Probably when he’s in London and realizes he can go out and get hammered and flirt with girls and be a complete dick and kind of just forget everything for a while. 

That’s how it kind of starts: he just wants to forget.

What it becomes is something different entirely. It becomes a way for him to deal. It becomes a way for him to feel like he’s himself. It gives him a false sense of security, as fucked up as that seems.

He’s so guilty all the time. 

He drinks to forget. 

He drinks to feel something.

He drinks to be in control.

He feels so out of control all the time. He feels like he’s not living his life – it’s living him. He feels like being out of control is the only way he can take back control. 

Jonny tries to understand. He likes to have a good time too, but he, like most of the people in Patrick’s life, thinks he takes it too far.

After the infamous cab driver incident of 2009, there’s a different kind of edge to his partying. He knows he fucked up – he’d never seen Jonny quite so furious – quite so hurt – quite so scared.

Patrick doesn’t really have an excuse, other than he let himself feel too much – so much that he had to do something to numb the emptiness. He tries to get it together after that. He tells everyone he just got carried away – he’s still young and naïve. It’s a stupid mistake. It’s not like Jonny didn’t have his own run in with the law when he was in college.

The attention fades a little; people don’t forget – but they don’t bring it up unless they really feel the need to decimate his character. But, Jonny can’t forget. Patrick feels like he’s constantly on his guard waiting for Patrick to mess up – drink too much again and do something even stupider. 

Patrick doesn’t – but he can’t – he can’t stop going out. He doesn’t want to. He can’t fight the freeing feeling he feels when he’s just drunk enough to not feel the emptiness in his chest – in his heart – in his mind. Part of him wants to stop for Jonny – part of him – most of him just wants to be alone, anyway. He knows it’s inevitable.

They fight about it a lot. It’s kind of that one thing that Patrick knows boils Jonny’s blood. He thinks he’s probably scared that Patrick’s going to push too far one day and do some actual damage – to himself or to someone else.

Pat gets where he’s coming from because honestly, sometimes, he doesn’t care. When he’s at a bar or in a club and he’s so drunk that he basically feels invincible – he feels like he’s floating on air – that he wouldn’t care if something went really wrong. He wouldn’t give a fuck. 

He’s scared of disappointing people, sure – of not being the person they expect him to be. He doesn’t want to upset his parents or his sisters, his teammates or even the city of Chicago. But, at the end of the day, he doesn’t care about his own well being sometimes. If something went wrong – if something happened to him, he wouldn’t care. He’d care about what it would mean for other people, but he wouldn’t care about what it would mean to himself.

Sometimes Jonny jokes that he doesn’t have any sense of self-preservation; he doesn’t know how close he is to the truth.

He kind of wishes that he would just get hit by a bus. It would be considered an accident. He would get what he wanted and no one would have to know his pain – the truth. He could fade into obscurity, and no one would have anything to talk about. He wouldn’t have to disappoint everyone in his life. He wouldn’t have to be honest. 

It gets really bad about a month after they win their first cup. The general elation that he’s feeling from scoring that goal fades and he starts to really begin to hate everything about himself. 

He begins to feel the numbness creep back into his chest.

He’s going out every night and waking up in weird places all around Buffalo. He’s getting into bar fights at least once a week. He’s shouting at his friends and being an ass to his sisters. He doesn’t call his parents back or show up to off season training sessions with his trainer in Buffalo on time, if at all.

He feels like he’s drowning a little. He should be so, so happy. At first, everything felt great; he was on top of the world. He thought he finally could forget about all those things that used to keep him up at night – the manic thoughts that have plagued most of his post-pubescent life. 

But, life doesn’t work like that, because one day he’s happy and the next day he’s angry, and the next day after that he wants to rip is hair out because he’s so done with feeling empty all the time. 

It comes to a head when Jonny shows up out of nowhere – he never does find out which one of his buddies squeals on him – and literally has to drag him out of the bar. The thing about Jonny is – he gets angry easily – like really fucking easily. It’s so easy to rile him up. But, Patrick rarely ever sees him lose his head from being angry – he rarely sees him really just completely set off. 

He drags Patrick out of the local bar by the scruff of his neck and hauls him into a cab back to his place. They don’t talk the whole ride or when Jonny putters around his small kitchenette looking for Aspirin or when he bullies Patrick to the bedroom to sleep it off.

His hands are shaking with rage, and he’s biting his lip so hard to keep from yelling, Patrick can actually see the blood.

“You need to stop,” Jonny chooses to open with when he sits on the bed. He’s clenching his fists in his lap, and Patrick’s afraid if he gets too close, he might actually get punched. 

Pat doesn’t choose to respond, because Jonny isn’t his mom and no one asked him to come – and wait, he ends up saying that out loud. 

“Just shut the fuck up,” Jonny holds up a hand, and Patrick can tell he’s trying his hardest not to yell. “Like hell I’m going to let you keep doing this. What are you thinking, Patrick?”

Patrick shrugs and avoids eye contact because that’s exactly the point – he doesn’t want to have to think. Being alone with his thoughts is scary.

“You’re not fucking thinking!” Jonny answers for him and rises from the bed to pace back and forth in the room. 

There’s a tense silence, and Patrick’s drunk but he’s not drunk enough to not be able to tell when someone’s crying.

“Your sisters keep calling me crying, Patrick – like sobbing on the phone!” He’s definitely yelling now, “And I keep thinking every time my phone rings someone’s going to tell me that something really bad’s happened – and I can’t stop thinking about it, okay?”

Patrick looks away because everything just got a little too intense.

“I just – fuck – I don’t know why you think you can just keep doing these things and there are not going to be consequences. You are not invincible, Kaner! I know it seems like it now, but things happen. If you keep putting yourself in these situations – you’re going to do something that could fucking kill you or someone else. Okay?”

Patrick blinks at him but really doesn’t know how to respond.

“Would you fucking say something? Jesus fucking Christ – do you even care that you’re keeping everyone in your family up and night and that I’m fucking terrified to go to bed thinking that I’m going to get a call in the middle of the night saying that you’re dead?”

“Jonny—“

“No,” he lets out a strangled sob. “Don’t act like I’m over-reacting. You’re destroying yourself. This isn’t just partying after the cup – you have a problem. You’re scaring me. I won’t – fuck – I’m not going to stand by and watch this shit happen. You are not invincible, okay? You’re not.”

Patrick nods and bows his head thinking about how to respond. He never set out to hurt anyone. He never meant to worry his parents or Jonny – he never meant to make him cry.

He’s so selfish. He’s so broken and dumb and he’s so fucked up that he let himself make the one person that means more to him than anyone else cry.

He’s started letting those things that he’s worked so hard to separate bleed together. There’s the person he is when he’s alone and the person he is for everyone else – and he needs to start being that person for Jonny. He needs to buck up and not use alcohol as a way to numb his pain.

Things get better after that. After Jonny cools down, Pat goes and visits him in Winnipeg for a few weeks before they’re due to the convention. But, it’s still like Jonny’s constantly looking over his shoulder, holding his breath waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You know I’m sorry, right?” Patrick squints at Jonny turning his head from the sun in Jonny’s parents’ backyard.

Jonny nods knowing exactly what he’s talking about, “I – I’m just – it’s going to take some time for me to feel – I dunno – like safe or something.”

“I’m trying—“

“I know, Kaner,” Jonny turns to him clamping his hand over Patrick’s wrist. “I can’t help it. I thought – I didn’t know if – it just made me revaluate some things.”

“What?” Patrick asks back quickly but quietly.

“I just – shit – Kaner—“ he looks around to reassure himself that his parents and David aren’t around. “I – I didn’t – there were times that I thought maybe – I’d lose you, y’know? Especially that night when Jackie called me and said no one had seen you in days, and you hadn’t been showing up to your workouts – and I just – I couldn’t imagine my life without you, y’know?”

Patrick swallows hard gazing at Jonny’s open expression that he’s never really seen directed at anyone else. He feels like he’s been punched right in the gut. Jonny may be far from perfect – but he’s Patrick’s.

And god, does Patrick love him.

But, it’s just not enough.

He doesn’t really know what to say, and he knows how hard it is for Jonny to let himself be vulnerable. So, he does the only thing he can think of and puts down his beer and climbs onto the lounger Jonny’s on, and lets him hold onto him as tightly as he can.

“I’m here,” he whispers after a few seconds and he can feel Jonny relax and kiss the top of his head.

It’s not really a lie.

He just kind of keeps going from there. He gets up everyday and some days are better than others, but he knows something – something’s not quite right. 

He and Jonny eventually move in together. They hang their Stanley Cup and Olympic jerseys on the walls next each other, pictures of their respective families blending seamlessly with one another.

He’s settled like he hasn’t been since he was a kid. He’s not living with host families worried if he’s good enough – he’s made it, in a lot of respects.

It should be perfect.

He has some really great days – some stretches where he thinks he’s outgrown whatever the feelings and bubbling inadequacy that he’s had most of his life. And then it just hits him, and he can barely get out of bed – feels like he’s sinking in quicksand and there’s nothing to hold onto and he can see himself losing it and nothing can be done.

There are weeks at a time where he goes to practices, skates, and games, but feels like he can’t bare to do anything else. He shuts himself into their office or bedroom and just wants to be alone – because he can’t – everything’s too much.

He’s drowning trying to tread water all the fucking time, and he’s just so tired of fighting.

Jonny calls it his way of “decompressing.” He knows Patrick gets tired – and shuts down – but he doesn’t know the numbness and the pain – how deep it runs. They both try to normalize his behavior into something that it’s not. Wanting to be alone sometimes and find peace is one thing, wanting to be alone so you don’t have to look at a face you’re disappointing – deal with anyone else because you don’t understand anything inside your head – is another.

In 2012, before Jonny’s concussion, Patrick starts to feel like the walls are going to break – that everything that he’s tried to separate from his life – the detachment, the numbness, the pain – is going to start spilling over even more than he’s let in the past.

He feels on edge all the time. He can’t sleep. He just feels like something has to give – and he doesn’t know how much longer he can fight. He starts to withdraw from his parents and sisters. He doesn’t call them back; he avoids family gatherings.

He knows they’re hurt – but he can’t force himself to suck it up and deal with it because he doesn’t want them to have to see him – he doesn’t want to have them around.

At first, Jonny doesn’t say anything; they’re in the middle of a long, trying season. He knows Patrick’s frustrated and not exactly taking well to playing center. He’s trying to be supportive, Patrick knows. He’s trying to give Patrick space and independence – and he thinks he’s seen Jonny reading some self-help bullshit – but he can’t be quite sure. 

“Did you get in a fight with your parents?” Jonny asks when they’re in bed after a close win at home.

“Uh, no?” Patrick asks shifting to find a comfortable position.

Jonny bites his lip and blows out a small breath, “Why are you avoiding them?”

“I’m not,” Patrick responds shrugging. “Been kind of busy.”

“Yeah,” Jonny replies catching one of Patrick’s hands and forcing him to look him in the eye. “But, it’s just – not like you. You’re so close with your family – it’s kind of my style to forget to call, y’know? Erica says she hasn’t heard from you in almost three weeks. Don’t you usually text each other like teenage girls?”

Patrick rolls his eyes, “I don’t know, Jonny. This season’s been hard, and I’ve been distracted and frustrated. I’ll try to call them more, okay?”

“No, it’s just—“ Jonny says desperately as Patrick tries to turn his gaze away. 

“What?” Patrick says impatiently.

“Nothing,” Jonny sighs reaching for the light. “Forget I said anything.”

It goes on, and it doesn’t get better. It feels like breathing and moving are secondary – he feels shackled to ground, and he can’t escape. He’s trying so hard to ignore it – harder than ever before, and he feels like he’s losing. He feels like this is finally the time where he doesn’t win – or at least maintain a tolerable grasp on his life.

He starts asking himself if it’s worth it. 

If living his life means stacking up these boxes of compartmentalized feelings that he’s never really explored hoping they don’t topple over onto him – if it’s worth it.

Is it worth it be so scared and so ashamed and yet so numb and so tired?

Is it worth feeling like you’re waiting for the door to break and you don’t know what’s on the other side?

He doesn’t know.

For the first time, hockey isn’t his refuge; it becomes part of the problem. He can’t get it together in front of the guys anymore – he can’t hold himself together. He’s put so many bandaids on so many wounds, that it’s like he’s starting to bleed out and there’s too many places to know the source.

He gets up every morning and he’s angry, and he doesn’t know why. He gets up and goes on, and he doesn’t know why – he doesn’t feel like he has any reasons to keep moving forward. But, he does because that’s where his feet continue to take him.

He’s not prepared for the feeling of falling out of love with hockey. He’s not prepared for looking at something that he sacrificed so much for – something he loved and cherished and fought for, for so long being just another obligation – something that is expected of him.

He pushes Jonny away every time he wants to talk about it – every time he wants Patrick to explain what’s wrong – are you tired? Are you sad? Are you frustrated? Are you hurt?

Patrick doesn’t know.

He wants to be the person who Jonny thinks he is – that’s he’s tried to be all these years, but he feels like he can’t reach inside himself any longer to find the façade. He wants Jonny, craves him that it almost physically hurts – but he can’t be close to him.

It’s like there’s this glass wall in between them – and Patrick and can see him, want him – he can reach out – but he just can’t touch him. He can’t feel him anymore.

When Jonny’s concussion hits – Patrick feels like he’s been dumped in pool of cold water – he feels like the rug has been pulled from under his feet. He blames himself mostly – they fucking live together for Christ’s sake! How could he not realize that he had a concussion?

He’s been so wrapped up in his own shit – his own make believe problems – that he doesn’t see a problem that’s right in front of him. The most important person in his life crashes his car and withdraws himself, and Patrick not for one second thinks that something’s wrong.

He feels like he’s let Jonny down – all those promises whispered in the dark on long roadtrips during their rookie year – forgotten and abandoned. He doesn’t understand how he’s gotten here.

He finds Jonny after practice the day he goes into the training room and never comes back – and when the news hits, Patrick can barely move.

He can see Jonny’s upset, so he closes the door of the room behind him making sure no one else comes in.

Jonny bites his lip and doesn’t meet Patrick’s eyes, “I’m sorry—“ he breaks off completely, voice raw.

Patrick climbs onto the training table next to him but doesn’t know what to say – what to do. He feels like he should have something to say – to his boyfriend that looks more frightened than Patrick thought he ever could – so unsure of himself. Patrick comes to the realization that he could have died – and, he doesn’t know what to do with that.

“Are you okay?” Patrick asks voice a little ragged.

Jonny shakes his head as slightly as he can and then cringes dropping his forehead into his hands at an almost glacial pace, “I don’t know.”

Patrick can relate, and the feeling hits him deep in the gut and makes his insides twist together almost too tightly. He wraps his arms around Jonny gently and feels the need to tell him how absolutely stupid this whole situation is, but he can’t find the words.

So, he does what he’s always done, and he becomes the person that he’s needed to be. He steps up and pushes everything else down because it’s not important. He puts a smile on his face and acts like he’s fine – so that he can be there for Jonny.

He changes all the light bulbs in their apartment to lower watts and gives updates in whispers to Jonny’s parents on the phone. He rubs Jonny’s back as he throws up 90% of his meals because the vertigo never subsides for long. He sits with him in the dark as Jonny clings to him trying not to move or jostle himself – because he feels like one wrong move may cause a domino effect of symptoms. He lets Jonny cry in the dark in their room at night when he feels like he’s never going to get better – and tries not to cry himself.

He doesn’t think he ever really makes the decision, at least consciously. One day he’s just going through the motions, playing the game he used to love – that still represents all his worth, and trying to keep Jonny from crumbling before his eyes. The next, he’s sitting on their couch when Jonny’s asleep in their bedroom manically writing notes and notes explaining why he did it – or is going to – or needs to, whatever – when he didn’t even know he wanted anything to be done.

The words just begin spilling out of him, and he can’t stop – everything he’s felt and ignored since he was 14 suddenly fills these half-a-dozen sheets – and he traces his words slowly like he can’t believe they were his own.

He thinks that he should feel some type of relief for finally letting it all out, but he doesn’t feel anything of the sort, he just feels as on edge, if not more than before. And all the words that he’s been pushing away, and suddenly every reason he ever had for not living is right in front of him staring back, as if daring him to do something about it.

He takes a breath and looks at the scribbles – the words that have been eating at him so long, he can barely remember a time when they didn’t exist. 

He saves all the tiny scraps of paper – shoves them back in the deepest part of their closet and doesn’t look at them again. But, he’s hyper-aware that they’re there burning into the carpet.

When Jonny gets cleared to play, he’s so fucking happy it actually almost hurts. He’s smiling as they’re getting skated to death – screamed at by Q – and doing all the dirty things that come with being an elite athlete. 

He’s ridiculously happy and determined – smiling and smiling – that Patrick doesn’t even know how to respond anymore. Everything about Jonny is renewed and brighter – and Patrick doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s handsy and attentive, in a way that he’s never been before. He pulls Patrick close in front of everyone and their mother, telling him constantly that he loves him, for no reason, other than the fact that he gets hockey back – he gets to do what he loves.

He’s just so excited – laughing and talking loudly about the playoffs and just being – content – and sometimes it’s too much, so much so that Patrick has to find some excuse to leave the room.

Patrick thinks later that maybe this is where he starts to make the decision – he doesn’t really know. But, seeing that look of pure joy on Jonny’s face and realizing he doesn’t know what that’s like – is jarring. Jonny’s happy because he has hockey and his teammates and family – and Patrick – and Patrick has those things and has no idea what to do with them.

They bomb out of the playoffs – and it isn’t unexpected. He gets this feeling in his gut right when Jonny comes back – and it never really seems to leave. Something just – it never felt right. He never felt like they could win. 

Maybe that’s part of the reason he skips the mullet – and essentially shaves his head. But, it’s not really a purposeful decision. The mullet is part of this façade that he just – he can’t keep up anymore – and thinking about having to joke with reporters about it – and have Jonny laugh and tell him he won’t touch him until he shaves it – just seems like something he doesn’t want to have to deal with. He doesn’t want the attention. He can’t stand any more than he already has.

A few nights after they lose, they’re lying in bed, Jonny spooned up against Patrick from behind, hand possessively on his hip. He rubs his hand a few times over Patrick’s shaved head making a few comforting noises in his ear. “We’ll be back next year,” he says with more optimism than Jonny’s had this soon after a playoff loss.

Patrick doesn’t respond; he just squeezes his eyes shut and hopes he can get through it – everything – because he just doesn’t feel like he can make it anymore.

“I’d rather have you than the Cup, babe – just know that—“ he whispers into Patrick’s neck.

Objectively, he knows Jonny’s just trying to make him feel better because their lack of momentum the entire season was in part, his fault. He was sluggish; he was irritable – and he wasn’t playing hockey like a former first overall draft pick. He let everyone down.

But, the whole thing is so cliché – so intimate that Patrick feels like the intimacy is choking him – he can’t breathe – he can’t move.

So, later that night when Jonny’s sound asleep, and he gets the text from one of his buddy’s about coming up to Madison to party away his troubles – it’s the easiest thing to say yes and escape from Chicago – from his responsibilities and the people who matter.

It’s the preverbal last straw, in many ways. He drinks and he parties and he does things that no one should ever do – especially a 23 year-old in the spotlight. He lies on sticky bar floors, smokes weed with 18 year-old sorority girls – and is an ass to almost everyone he comes in contact with.

He doesn’t know what he wants out of it – he just wants to feel something – but it just doesn’t happen. Jonny’s leaving him messages telling him to come home. Sharpy’s texts are becoming more and more frantic as times goes on, and Jess and Jackie tear up in their voicemails telling him that he’s an asshole – but he needs to come home and be safe.

He feels nothing.

It’s easy to find his way back to Chicago.

It’s easy to key open his condo at Trump Tower that he stills has in his name, in case anyone starts to ask questions. 

It’s the easiest thing he’s ever done.

He’s angry when he wakes up. He couldn’t even accomplish the one of thing that he needed to – he couldn’t even manage to take his own life – to take control.

Jonny’s crying and squeezing his hand so hard, it feels like all the bones may shatter. He’s on his feet kissing every inch of available skin on Patrick’s face whispering that he loves him over and over like it could make everything instantly better.

It doesn’t.

Patrick can feel the hot, angry tears start dripping down his face, and pretty soon he’s shouting for Jonny to get away from him – to stop loving him – to leave him alone – leave him to die.

Suddenly there’s doctors and more yelling and nurses and he’s being sedated – and he can see Seabs pull Jonny out of the room.

From then, he’s just numb.

They whisk him away to some treatment center; he laughs when he thinks about what Blackhawks’ PR has to do to spin it. He bets that they’re earning all their overtime and bonuses just on him alone.

He doesn’t know what the story is or how it plays out because they don’t get to watch TV, have Internet, or even get to read the local papers. They’re trapped with just the doctors, each other, and books about basically nothing.

He doesn’t really know where he is – literally. He was pretty drugged up when he got in the towncar, and Megan from the PR department tried to explain it to him. He didn’t really hear her though – couldn’t really hear anything but his heart in his ear, and he doesn’t even care – it doesn’t really matter.

He doesn’t know when he’s supposed to get released or how it’s supposed to play out or really anything. 

His roommate’s name is Jared, and he’s a 40-something electrical engineer who likes to start fires in his spare time. He’s a cool guy, as roommates go. Patrick doesn’t have that big of a frame of reference because, he realizes one day with a lurch, Jonny’s been his only roommate since he was 19, and everyone before him just seems kind of unimportant. 

No one seems to know who he is, or they don’t care, and it’s a nice change of pace. Distantly, he’s sure the front office has sent over a shit ton of NDAs for everyone to sign, but he doesn’t worry himself too much about it. He can’t control the business side – hockey related or not. 

The numbness doesn’t go away, and Patrick just – he doesn’t really know what to do or think about it. He doesn’t know what he wants – is he – why is he even here? Who does it make him?

Every afternoon between group sessions and mild workouts, he goes and sits down with his personal therapist, Janine. She has to be over 30, but she has bright red hair and a nose ring, and Patrick doesn’t get her at all.

He thinks he’s been there about 10 days, it’s kind of hard to tell, when they have it pretty much down to a science. He comes in and sits down, they exchange pleasantries, she asks about the other patients, how he’s feeling, and then after they run out of shit to say, they just sit in silence. 

After the first few times it happened, Patrick couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Aren’t you supposed to like force me to talk about my feelings?” he blurts eventually when the silence becomes to heavy.

She raises an eyebrow, sets her clipboard to the side, and leans forward, “I’m more here to listen. I can’t make you do anything.”

Patrick shrugs, “Good. Can’t you just like write whatever down on that sheet, and they can give me whatever drugs they’re going to send me off with, so we can just get this over with?”

“Do you think you need drugs?”

He laughs and it sounds hollow and humorless, even to his own ears, “Well, I tried to off myself, so yeah, I think I need some fucking drugs.”

After that, they don’t really say much to each other. It doesn’t bother him really; it’s fine – he’s just going to ride out treatment, get whatever anti-depressants, Prozac shit they’re going to let him leave with, and go on his merry way.

But, he realizes lying in bed one night hearing Jared’s faint snoring, which is nothing like Jonny’s intense mouth breathing, that he doesn’t know where he’s going to go after that. His head feels clearer than it has in a long time – and suddenly, he feels like everything is closing in on him again.

So, he stays here for 3 weeks, or a month or two months, or whatever – but they can’t make him stay forever. But, then what? He goes back home to Buffalo? To Chicago? He’ll have to face his parents, his family – Jonny. The idea makes him a little dizzy – and for the first time since he’s been in treatment, he thinks of the future – of what it means that he’s there. 

He’s not going to be able to go back and pretend like everything’s okay – he knows no one will let him get away with that shit anymore, and honestly, he doesn’t know if he wants to – if he can.

He can feel the tears start to well up in the corners of his eyes for the first time since that day in the hospital, and he feels angry again – angry that he didn’t do it – that he didn’t fucking follow through like always.

And not only that, now people know – they fucking know how weak he is – how incredibly stupid he is on top of that. Who fucking fails at killing himself?

He feels this guilt settle between his ribs and stay there, and the feeling isn’t new, but it’s different. He thinks about what his parents must be thinking – how distracted his sisters must be knowing what happened and not knowing why – not knowing the truth.

He can feel his scars almost burn on his wrists, and for the first time since he’s been here, he thinks about doing it again – clearly imagines trying to finally make it permanent because the damage has already been done. 

He’s already put everyone through enough – why can’t they just let him die?

He walks around with that feeling in his chest for the next few days; he acts like nothing’s different that the numbness still fills his body up, but he feels foundationally different. 

The silence of this place starts to really grate on him. He yearns for the quiet moments that got him through his young adult life, but all he has is his own loop of thoughts and the stifling silence of those around him.

The thing is everyone around him is talking – about the fucking weather, how many laps they swam in the lap pool this morning, and everything that means fucking nothing, and it’s driving him crazy.

He brings it up during his pleasantries with Janine one afternoon, and she studies him curiously. 

“I just – I don’t get how these people can pretend that nothing’s fucking wrong with them – we all fucking know. Like outside of group, they’re just like it’s all hunky dory or some shit.”

“Do you talk in group?” Janine asks jotting down something on her clipboard.

Patrick shakes his head even though he assumes she already knows the answer.

“Did you ever think that maybe they’re not pretending?”

Patrick opens his mouth but closes it quickly. He never really did consider that. He just – he doesn’t know how someone – someone like him could just be – normal or something.

They don’t talk for the rest of the session, but as Patrick gets up to leave Janine gives him a look like they actually accomplished something.

He means to walk back to his room after the session, but his feet decide to take him to the front desk, “Uh, I think they said I had a few phone calls saved up?”

The girl blinks at him, “I can check. What’s your last name?”

He rattles off the information quickly and tries to not meet her eyes again.

Once she enters everything into a computer, she takes him into another small room down the hall.

“We let you close the door to give you privacy, and I’ll just tap on the door when I need you to start wrapping it up. Okay?”

He nods slowly eyes trained to the floor and takes a shaky breath sitting down in the chair next to the landline.

At first he thinks about calling his mom and hearing her voice – but he can’t – he can’t make himself do it. So, he calls the person he knows he needs to talk to.

“’Ello?”

Patrick can barely hear his voice over his heart in his ear, “Jonny?”

There’s a long pause, and Patrick almost thinks that he didn’t speak into the phone, “Patrick?”

He sounds absolutely wrecked – never in all the years he’s known Jonny has he heard him sound like that, and he can feel the tears starting to fall – it’s like once he hears his voice, the flood gates just open up.

They sit on the line for a good ten minutes just listening to each other breathe – in and out and in and out – and it hits Patrick – that he’s alive – and he shouldn’t be – doesn’t know if he wants to be.

“Are you okay?” Jonny asks breaking the silence the words coming out slow and measured like he’s afraid and has been for a while. 

“Yes,” Patrick says automatically opening and closing his mouth gasping for breath trying to get his breathing under control, but he just can’t stop crying. “No – fuck – no I’m – I’m not okay.”

He doesn’t know if Jonny says anything because he can’t hear anything over the sound of his heart beating and the sobs retching from his throat. “I haven’t been okay – I haven’t been okay for a long time. I’m – I’m fucked up, Jonny.”

“I don’t know what to say—“ Jonny starts words getting caught coming out slow and choked.

“I’m sorry – I’m so sorry – I didn’t – I – I – I did mean it. I have a problem. These fucking people – I’m worse than them. I thought – I don’t know what I thought – but I – I can’t take it anymore.”

“Hey,” Jonny says quickly voice sounding firmer than he has a right to sound. “You can get through this, okay? We—“ his voice breaks slightly, “We can get through this. You have me – you’re always going to have me.”

Patrick rubs the back of his hand over his face trying to steadying his breathing nodding his head like Jonny can see him. He takes a deep breath, “Are you mad?”

“Mad?” Jonny repeats after a few beats as if he’s never heard the word before. “I’m – fuck – Patrick – I could never – I’m not mad at you, baby.”

Patrick sighs wiping at his eyes again, “Are you sure?”

“Hey,” Jonny says again using a cross between his Captain voice and that soft voice that he only ever uses with Patrick. “Hey, listen to me. I know – I know it’s bad,” his voice sounds rawer than it had seconds before. “I’m not pretending it’s not. But – fuck – we won the fucking Cup – we can do anything, alright? That means we can get through this.”

Patrick sucks in a breath, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jonny states determinedly. “I love you – and everything else – we can work through, okay? I love you more than anything else, and nothing else matters.”

Patrick shakes his head palming his eyes painfully aware of his world crumbling around him. He knows other things matter. He knows – and he doesn’t believe Jonny, really, but he doesn’t know what to say. He’s scared – he’s so fucking scared. “I love you, too.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Jonny repeats, and Patrick’s not sure whom he’s trying to convince anymore.

They hang up a few minutes later simply because Patrick can’t take hearing Jonny’s voice anymore. He’s telling him what he wants to hear – what he needs to hear, if Patrick’s being honest, but it still feels hollow.

He goes back to his room and lies on his bed staring up at the stark white ceiling. His chest his still tight; his eyes are still red-rimmed, and he doesn’t know if he wants to cry or laugh or what.

He doesn’t know how long he lies there before he sees Jared looming over him.

“You alright, kiddo?” he asks a tentative smile curling on his lips. “Hard day?”

Patrick blinks at him as he shifts to sit on the foot of his bed.

“You want to talk about it? I know I’m not your therapist or anything, but I can listen. We’re all going through similar things.”

Patrick sighs shifting to sit up a little; he bites his lip avoiding Jared’s gaze, “I just – I don’t know where to go from here, y’know?”

Jared nods slowly and grasps his hands together as if they could find him the words. “It’s hard – especially when you didn’t really plan on being here?” He laughs self-deprecatingly and trudges on, “It’s okay to be scared. We’re all scared. Depression or no depression.”

“It’s just – everyone here seems like something’s – I don’t know clicked for them? And, I just – I feel the same – if not more lost than before? I don’t know if I want to get better. If I’m capable, and it just seems like a waste? I don’t know how to describe it,” Patrick says words rushing out before he can stop them. “What does it mean to even get better, y’know? I don’t – I don’t – even get like how I got here.”

Jared studies him for a moment and then huffs out a small laugh, “Like one day you just woke up, and you were out of control?”

Pat shrugs, “Kind of? It was like suddenly I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I just – I didn’t have the energy to try to pretend I was okay.”

“I—“ Jared starts, and Patrick can see him swallow his words. “Y’know, kid, I’ve been dealing with this shit for a long time. I’ve been on every antidepressant, Lithium bullshit that you can think of. It gets better, sometimes, and sometimes it gets worse – and sometimes you drink a whole handle of Jack Daniel’s and light your house on fire with you in it.”

Patrick blinks at him because what the fuck?

Jared’s eyes glaze over a little and he laughs as if he can’t believe what he’s saying either. “I’ve seen shrink after shrink trying to get over all those thoughts, y’know? I’ve tried to live my life, and sometimes, it just doesn’t work out.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” Patrick questions quietly.

“Nah,” Jared responds flippantly. “What I mean is – all that shit happened plus thousands of other stories I’ll spare you from, and I’m still fucking here.”

“But you’re in inpatient,” Patrick retorts voice raising a little feeling on the edge of a quiet hysteria.

“Yeah?” Jared laughs again. “But, I’m fucking alive. Sometimes, that’s all you’re going to have, y’know?”

“But you tried to kill yourself?” Patrick questions heart rate starting to speed up feeling like he’s going to start sobbing or shouting or – something.

“Yes? No? It’s complicated, kid. Sometimes life is more about falling down than getting up.”

Patrick stares at him because that makes no fucking sense.

“It’s not that I fell down – or didn’t get up – I don’t even get this analogy—“ Patrick can hear himself laugh hollow in his throat and the tears begin to fall in his lap. “I just – I want someone to tell me what to do. What’s the answer? How – how can I move forward? Should I want to?”

Jared sighs heavily as if debating whether to continue the conversation, “There’s – there’s not a simple answer kiddo – and no one can tell you what to do – what to feel. But, you just have to look at yourself, really look at yourself and decide to move forward. You can’t change anything that’s already happened, right? But, only you can decide to make the choice to want to get through it.”

“But—“ Patrick responds biting his lip almost glaring at Jared from across the room. “You’ve relapsed how many times? How – how is it worth it to want to keep going?”

“None of us know what’s going to happen, right? You may never hit that place you felt before you made the attempt again – or you may feel it every year for the rest of your life. I can’t answer that. You can’t answer that, even. Therapy may work, drugs may work – I don’t know, kiddo. I don’t know.” 

He pauses looking away from Patrick trying to find the words, “You’re an athlete, right? Every year your time goes out to compete with a clean slate and a what, 1 in 30 shot of winning everything at the end, right? But you don’t think about those other 29 losers at the beginning of the year when everyone’s starting at the same point – you just think that there’s a chance that you could win. Recovery’s like that – you may be more likely to relapse – but you can’t let that stop you from trying – because there will always be a chance that you won’t – that you’ll win the Stanley Cup.”

Patrick surprises himself by barking out a laugh for the first time in what seems like forever, “Are you telling me I can win at depression?”

Jared smiles and comes over and pulls him into a loose hug, “Yeah kiddo, if that’s what gets you going.”

It gets better after that – or that’s a lie – it doesn’t get better per se, but it gets different. 

“I—fuck,” he opens with eloquently at his next one-on-one session with Janine. “I don’t know – I don’t know if I want to get better.”

It’s the truth – it’s so much the truth that Patrick feels like someone’s going to call him on it – pop out of nowhere at scream at him for letting it become this.

Janine purses her lips together looking a little surprised, “Well, what do you want?”

“I – I don’t know,” Patrick shrugs uneasily. “I want the pain to go away. I want a normal brain. I want to wake up somewhere else in another body in another universe where I’m not defective.”

Janine taps her pen and searches for words in a way Patrick’s never seen her do. “But you don’t want to get better.”

“I don’t know,” Patrick shrugs again ringing his hands together. “I – I don’t know if I’m strong enough to put the work in that I know I’ll have to. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to face all those people. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to face my depression. I – I don’t know if I can look it in the eye, y’know? Does that even make sense?”

Janine nods and jots something down on her notepad. “You know, Patrick, you don’t have to face all of that at once. You don’t have to be ready at once. You didn’t get to the NHL in one day. It took years, right? Years of hard work and dedication—”

“But – I decided – I made a choice to put in that work and sacrifice those things. And I – I don’t know if I want to do this,” he interrupts. “I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“I don’t know,” he says slowly hanging his head. “I wish I knew.”

“Well,” Janine says after a beat. “Maybe it’s time you thought about it. Maybe it’s time to start walking forward instead of jogging in place. Might be slower – but you’ll actually go somewhere.”

“Are you going to tell me it starts with a single step?” Patrick asks cracking a smile.

“No, but it’s the truth. Make a conscious decision each day to improve and help yourself – ask others for help – and you’ll be well on your way.”

“I’m scared,” Patrick admits quietly. “I don’t know who I am without – without being like this.”

“Maybe it’s time to find out,” Janine shrugs. “Maybe you’ll learn something about yourself – maybe you’ll find happiness.”

“And what if I don’t? What if I find that happiness doesn’t exist for me? What if I always feel like this?”

“But what if you don’t?” Janine challenges. “Do you think you owe yourself the opportunity to see what’s on the other side?”

"I don't know," is all Patrick can come up with -- because he doesn't. But he -- he hopes. He doesn't know if that's good enough. But he wants it to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I'm super apprehensive of posting something that I haven't finished, but I hope that everyone who stumble upon this enjoys it. I hope it makes you feel something.
> 
> Thank you all for reading!


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